


For what binds us

by Ruta



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Rewrite, F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Mutually Unrequited, Protectiveness, Roan is the a bellarke shipper, eventual pining, my own 3x02
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:22:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,577
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24277327
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruta/pseuds/Ruta
Summary: He draws his sword and Clarke wonders if this is the end, how her story ends. She expects to be stabbed, that he threatens Bellamy to convince her to collaborate. What she doesn't expect is for him to grab Bellamy and put him across his shoulders."What are you doing?""I’m taking him with us.""Why?" She already knows the answer. She has known it from the moment he allowed her to treat Bellamy. The answer is the truth she run away from since leaving him near Arkadia’s gates. It’s a dangerous truth and now it’s in the hands of the enemy."Even Wanheda cannot kill anyone without herbleirona."The way he said it, his gaze darting from her to Bellamy, makes her blood run cold. It’s unnerving, as if he knew something that has yet to happen. As if he thought he had an advantage.(Roan doesn't stab Bellamy in the leg but in the side. He has to take him with them.)
Relationships: Bellamy Blake/Clarke Griffin
Comments: 3
Kudos: 148





	For what binds us

"Now we're even."

After stabbing Bellamy in the side and knocking him out, the grounder grabs her by the elbow and drags her towards the exit.

Clarke tries to free herself from his grip, but it’s an instinctive reaction. Down to the very last molecule her attention is all focused on Bellamy. She stares aghast at his body lying on the floor, the blood staining the blade held by the grounder. Fear it’s a poison that slowly, progressively spreads through her veins without encountering obstacles.

No, she thinks horror-struck. _No_. "I have to help him- I have to-" She hardly notices when the grounder let her go. She falls hard on the knees next to Bellamy and moves the furs aside to check the wound. It's not easy. Her wrists are still tied and even in her state of distress, it doesn’t escape her that her hands are trembling uncontrollably. Somehow, she manages to examine it to the best of her ability.

She breaths. After the first one, breathing becomes easier and the pain in her chest subsides.

The dagger didn’t hit any vitals. The blood loss is manageable. She staunches the wounds with the ragged gag that hangs from her neck, keeping a steady pressure. The grounder knew what he was doing. _Only an inch higher. An inch higher, it would have killed him._ Something inside her trembles. Even if he is not in immediate danger, the wound must be disinfected and sutured. A compression bandage is only a temporary solution.

While considering about what to do, she can feel the looming presence behind her, the insistence of a penetrating gaze aimed at her like the sword of Damocles.

"If you wanted to stop him from following us, you could have hit him in the leg," she blurts without turning.

He cleans the edge of the dagger. "It wouldn't have been enough to stop him. He went through an army to reach you. He wouldn't stop looking for us."

That's right, but Clarke isn't stupid enough to confirm his assumptions.

"You don't know him," she says. Believe what he wants.

"No, but you do."

She cannot reply to that. She knows he wouldn't have stopped. It is what they are. It is what they do for each other. No matter how much she hurt him, she knows she can count on Bellamy. She would trust him with her life.

"Get up," orders the grounders, grabbing her by the elbow yet again. Although strong, this time the hold is not painful like before.

She shakes her head. She doesn’t stop applying pressure on the wound even when she feels the tip of the blade against the throat. She isn’t afraid. She is only grateful that he’s threatening her and not Bellamy. Even if faced with such a choice, the idea of abandoning him like this, unconscious and injured with an enemy army not far away, terrifies her more than anything else.

"I can't leave him," she says softly.

"Who is he?" His eyes are still the eyes of a stranger, but the spark that passes through them is unmistakable. It makes her feel trapped.

"Nobody," she replies quickly. It’s a blatant lie and not even a good attempt. Usually she’s better than that. Not now. She’s not thinking straight. She stopped being Wanheda as soon as Bellamy pushed her hair away from her forehead, curled his mouth in that half-smile of mindless swagger, his bright and anxious eyes wolfing her face, cataloguing the differences and mapping them as a new constellation.

The grounder unties her, and she must fight every instinct to not indulge in the urge to take Bellamy's face in her hands, put her forehead close to his. She immediately gets to work.

The grounders doesn’t blink. Why should he? He already has everything he needs to know, the highest hand. He found out her weakness. Her heart is in front of him, beaten up and bleeding out.

"Make it quick," he says before placing himself to guard the stairs.

Clarke would like to hate him. She cannot. He could have killed him, and he didn't. She owes him Bellamy's life, and this is worth more than any debt of honour.

*

After the distant echo of the war drums begins to disappear and the ground stops shaking with the advance of a hundred warriors, the silence from the forest becomes deafening.

The grounder returns next to her. He doesn’t grab her and doesn’t point his sword at her, but the tone is imperious. "Move. Time to get back on track."

Bellamy's face is pale and shiny with sweat in the penumbra. Clarke continues to count the pulse in the wrist – it’s weak and irregular -, to observe the chest that rises imperceptibly with each breath. "No."

"You promised," he accuses her, his voice more like a growl. "Where's your honour?"

"I promised that I would’ve follow you if you had let him go. Who is really without honour?"

Time is the essence. They both know it. As headstrong as he is, Bellamy isn't the hot head he looks like. Blocked by the passage of the army, somewhere nearby hidden and waiting exactly like them there must be a rescue team. Even the grounder must have come to the same conclusion.

He draws his sword and Clarke wonders if this is the end, how her story ends. She expects to be stabbed, that he threatens Bellamy to convince her to collaborate. What she doesn't expect is for him to grab Bellamy and put him across his shoulders.

"What are you doing?"

"I’m taking him with us."

"Why?" She already knows the answer. She has known it from the moment he allowed her to treat Bellamy. The answer is the truth she run away from since leaving him near Arkadia’s gates. It’s a dangerous truth and now it’s in the hands of the enemy.

"Even Wanheda cannot kill anyone without her _bleirona_."

The way he said it, his gaze darting from her to Bellamy, makes her blood run cold. It’s unnerving, as if he knew something that has yet to happen. As if he thought he had an advantage.

*

After hours of walking, Bellamy hasn't woken up yet and she's starting to worry.

Hands tied by a rope attached to the grounder’s belt, Clarke trudges behind him, eyes fixed on the body on his shoulders. He didn’t struck Bellamy’s head to the point of causing a concussion. She doesn’t understand. And then she does. The sudden awareness makes her stop on the spot. Incandescent anger fills her lungs.

She pulls the rope until the grounder is forced to stop too. When he turns around, she barely refrains herself from hitting him. "What did you give him?" She clenches her hands into fists around the rope, her knuckles white as freshly fallen snow. "He hasn't woken up yet. What did you give him?"

He doesn’t deny. He doesn't even seem surprised that he has been discovered. Checks the trees around them as if they were hiding potential threats among the branches. After a moment of consideration, he places Bellamy against the trunk of the nearest tree and proceeds to tie him. "He won't die," he says curtly.

She narrows her eyes, watching his manoeuvres. Ready to intervene at the slightest provocation. "Give me one reason why I should trust you."

"I can give you two," he replies in the same tone, looking at her over his shoulder. "You’re both still alive."

Anger recedes and when she allows herself to observe the clearing, not for the first time she’s crossed by a strange feeling of familiarity. She recognizes where they are, but it doesn't make the slightest sense. From the start, she took for granted that he intended to take her to the ice nation. Why should she have assumed otherwise?

"You are not taking me to your people." It’s only a conjecture, but her voice sounds confident and his reaction is revealing and satisfying. His hands freeze before he resumes tightening the knot. There was hesitation, it’s undeniable, and Clarke got the confirmation she needed.

He shakes his head and says something in Trig, too quietly for her to grasp the words, let alone translate their meaning. "I should have blindfolded you."

Clarke frowns. "But you didn't." The question she is asking is clear. Why didn't he?

He shrugs. "You are different from what I expected."

"What do you get out of all this?”

"Something you can't give me."

"And she can?" The Ice Nation is in the opposite direction. Denying now is useless. The grounder must read it in her face.

He raises a corner of his mouth in a smile of recalcitrant respect. "You're clever, I'll give you that."

 _Lexa_. He's taking her to Lexa. It makes sense, she thinks. The Ice Nation is rebelling. The old balances are gone. Her capture is the latest attempt to recompose the coalition, to obtain a semblance of peace. She still can't comprehend how. For this reason, it is a priority to reach Polis. Cut their losses. Quantify the extent of the problem. Once again protect what she loves at the expense of everything else, even herself.

"Then we agree." She lifts her chin and looks him right in the eye. "I'll let you take me to Polis, let Lexa think I'm your prisoner."

She caught him off guard. Although his expression doesn’t change, he is not fast enough to mask the surprised lightning that has crossed his gaze. "Why should you?" he asks, wary.

"My people, my responsibility." She says the words casually, with the ease of someone who keeps repeating them. With the absolute conviction that others pour into their religious faith. "We don't need to fight yet another war."

"Especially when you're still recovering from the last one," he says, brutally honest. "What do you want in exchange for your collaboration?"

Her answer is immediate. “Immunity for my friend. You will stop administering him any dose you are giving him. We got a deal?"

She can practically hear him as he reflects, trying to steal the secret behind her motives. The trick is just that. There are no secrets. The reasons are those she gave him. In the end, he nods. "Fine. If your _friend_ shuts up, we have a deal."

*

When Roan tells her that the effect of the narcotic that he has given to Bellamy will disappear within a couple of hours, Clarke proposes a stop. She wants to check that the bandage is holding and above all -

"It's ready." Roan points to the dagger skewered in the embers of the fire. The iron is hot. When she takes it and brings it closer to Bellamy's side to cauterize the wound, her hand is firm. Her mind is not.

She is grateful that Bellamy is still unconscious. If he had been awake and responsive, she is not sure that she would have been able to do it. Probably yes, but it would have required more fortitude.

Roan observes the scene and Clarke feels incredibly exposed. What she feels is not a weakness, now she knows it but there was a time when she tried to make hers the opposite line of thought, one that boycotts ties and affections as if they were something abhorrent, to be ashamed of.

This was before. Before she understood that her discernment is not clouded by what she feels. An act of mercy is not a fault. Her feelings don’t make her unreliable, don’t hinder her perceptions of reality and of what is right, but are the driving force behind her obduracy. They are not an obstacle. However, they make her vulnerable and it’s exactly from this that she ran away. Having realized their depth, the leagues she is willing to travel in order to protect them, it appalled her. There is little or nothing that she would not do for the people she loves, and the extent of her actions torments her day and night. It is not what she did that defines the person she has become. It is her self-sacrificing love, her commitment to them. Her job is to keep them safe and she will do whatever it takes.

"He is a tough one to kill, isn’t he?"

It takes a few seconds for Clarke to understand what Roan is referring to and when she does, she is overwhelmed with nausea. Because he is staring at Bellamy's bare back, the left side where he has obvious burn scars. Scars caused because of her, albeit indirectly. Clarke touches them with her fingertips. She hopes her face won't betray her or let her thoughts leak. She knows it’s a vain hope.

"I had heard that the Sky People likes to blow things up."

She stiffens. “We don't do it on purpose. We don't attack unless we are attacked."

"Jus drein jus daun," she hears him say.

"It was me." She turns to Roan. His face is in the shade, but even if it wasn't, she knows she wouldn't be able to crack him. His face is impenetrable. It remains an enigma. She doesn't know what makes her talk to him. Perhaps it is the fact that she does not know him, that she does not care to be judged by him. Sometimes it's easier to talk to a stranger because you don’t have to worry about his opinion, you don't mind him not liking you. “We were at war with Triku before we got together with the rest of our people. Most of us managed to take shelter inside the dropship with which we landed. When I closed the doors, he was outside." He survived, but it doesn't change what she did. It was the first time she left him behind. Her hand is still resting on his back, in correspondence with the largest scar. Under the palm she perceives the scar tissue that sticks out the surrounding skin. She follows the outline with her finger.

"Wanheda," he says. For the first time his tone is not derisory. He looks at her as if he recognizes her, as if he understands what she is talking about, but even more as if he heard what she didn’t said aloud as well.

She would like to tell him that they are not that different, especially in time of war. Instead, she folds her lips into something that she would almost be tempted to define a smile if it didn't taste so bitter. "I still prefer the name Clarke."

*

"Clarke." Her name is the first word Bellamy says when he opens his eyes. His voice is hoarse and croaking from disuse and a dry throat, but it remains the most beautiful sound she’s heard in weeks.

She is immediately beside him. "I'm here." She wraps an arm around his torso and helps him sit up, paying attention to the bandage. She brings the canteen to his lips. Bellamy drinks greedily, emptying the entire contents. He doesn’t comment on the fact that his hands are tied while hers are free. His trained eye turns away from her to focus on the fire where Roan is sharpening his sword, pretending to ignore them when instead it’s perfectly clear that he is listening to every word of what they say. She squeezes Bellamy's wrist as a warning. Not that there’s a need. He rests his hand on hers, squeezing back.

"Where are we?" he asks.

"A day's march from Polis."

"Polis?"

"He's not taking us to Azgeda’s queen, but to Lexa."

The mention is enough. Clarke can already see the grudge surfacing in his blazing eyes, the titanic effort to keep his caustic sarcasm at bay and focus on immediate priorities. "Why am I tied up?"

"It's just a precaution." Clarke turns to Roan and adds louder, with the purpose to make herself heard, "After all, Roan and I have an agreement."

After explaining the terms of the deal, she is not surprised that his mood swings. The confusion has succumbed to anger. When his temper flashes, his mouth gets twisted, crooked just like that. "How could you agree to that?"

"What’s the last thing you remember?"

Bellamy frowns while he tries to concentrate and think about the events of the last day. He touches his side with a scowl of disgust and self-loathing. "It's my fault we're in this situation."

Clarke shakes her head but has no way of saying what she thinks, of expressing her gratitude for his rescue attempt. (He failed, but that's not the important part. _He tried_ and that’s what matters.)

The scorn that Bellamy directed towards himself until a moment ago is now focused on her. The look he gives her is full of venom. A gunshot wound would do less harm. She can't think about it. Not now. "If you never left-"

"You're right," she interrupts him before it gets too hard. She wonders if she dreamed the way he looked at her the day before. If it was just an optical illusion generated by her most hidden desires. If she projected something that doesn't exist. "I’m done running."

"Your timing is perfect," he says wryly.

Yeah, it could be better. "It never is," she concedes meekly and maybe it's the fact that she didn’t throw back, that it lacks the usual bite or maybe it's the vaguely melancholic tone, but the wrinkles in Bellamy's face are noticeably softened, the tension abandons him.

"What are you going to do?" he asks less harshly.

"Face Lexa." She begins to untie his wrists.

"Obviously." She hears him snort. She knows him well enough to know in advance the brooding expression on his stern face. "Probably too much to hope for some peace."

"Maybe we were born for this," she replies with a lightness that is far from feeling. "Maybe it’s in our blood."

She cannot decipher the look he gives her. The fire is not close enough to fully illuminate it. "War?"

"Death," she corrects him. She bites the inside of the cheek. "You know what they call me now?"

"I heard." Bellamy doesn't rub his wrists to reactivate blood circulating. He doesn't stop her and doesn't shrinks away when she starts to do it for him. "Whatever name they give you it doesn't define who you are."

"What defines us then? If not our actions, then what?"

He doesn't answer immediately, he just holds her hands in his. When she ventures to look up, Bellamy lets them go. He reaches out and places one on her chest. "This," he says while gently patting her forehead with the other. "And this."

They have never been so close. She is practically kneeling in front of him, between his legs, but she doesn’t refer to the merely physical aspect. She is tempted to do something rash and foolish. She licks her lips and sees the way his eyes follow the movement. His pupils are dilated, but it could be a residual effect of the narcotic. "I'm sorry I left you to carry the burden alone."

He has that troubled look again, only this time it’s impossible for her not to understand the reason, especially when he murmurs, pulling back slightly and clearing his throat, "I wasn’t alone."

 _Oh_. The crash is silent, somewhat muffled by exhaustion. She has never been more awake and lucid than at that moment, but the world has taken on surreal contours. "What's her name?"

For a moment it almost seems like he doesn't want to answer. Then he rethinks about it. "Gina," he says and when he pronounces the name there is a peculiar and unequivocal tinge of fondness. She only heard him use that tone when speaking to Octavia. She feels a twinge in her heart.

"You don't have to come with me." What she is trying to tell him is that she doesn't want him to feel obligated to follow her. That she would understand if he chose not to. He has people waiting for his return, someone who asked him to come back, who cares that he's fine. No, it's unfair. This is also true for her. She too has a family to return to.

He continues to look at her and when he arches a corner of his mouth in the familiar lopsided smile, she knows that he has listened to each of the thoughts that she has not expressed verbally. "You're crazy if you think I'll let you go alone."

She sits next to him and lightly bumps her shoulder with his. He shakes his head, hiding a smirk. No matter what, they’re together, still on the same page. She knows she has him. He is her best friend, the person who knows the risks and when it is appropriate to take them because it is a necessary sacrifice. (What binds them is more than scar tissue and survivor’s guilt. They are shared battles, triumphs, and defeats. It is something that beats in unison within them.)

"If I hadn't left, you think that we-" She can't finish. It doesn’t matter. He will understand anyway.

Out of the corner of her eye she sees him swallowing. "I don’t know. I don't know, but I would’ve liked to figure it out with you."

When her gaze crosses his, she is not the only one whose eyes are glassy for the loss of what could have been and was not.

"Yeah," she whispers, "me too."

**Author's Note:**

> This was supposed to be a short story. Something to overcome the writer’s block while I am writing an AU of the 5 season where Clarke kills McCreary, saving the Valley from destruction, but even so not everything is easy and happy and – quick version, I had to overcome the writer’s block.  
> The story should have been just the last two scenes but then I wanted to contextualize them and one thing leads to another and the words began to multiply.  
> I hope you enjoyed it! How will you spend the last day before the premiere? I’ll be watching my favourite episodes. What about you guys?


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